Meanwhile, the United Nations and the International Red Cross launched an urgent 70-million-dollar appeal to bolster reconstruction and relief efforts in this southeastern city.

The 56-year-old man pulled from the rubble, identified only as Jalil, was in a coma at a Ukrainian field hospital, an Iranian doctor said.

"We are not sure he will be saved. One whole part of his body is cold," the doctor said.

An Iranian search and rescue team found him alive Wednesday night, under a piece of furniture, which formed an air pocket in rubble allowing him to breathe.

Iranian state media has reported a number of "miracle" survivors after rescuers had all but abandoned hope of finding more people alive, including a 97-year-old woman.

But one of the World Health Organisation's top officials sent to Bam to help coordinate relief efforts said he doubted other survivors would be found.

"It is very unlikely that in the cold of the night -- which is sometimes minus five (Celsius, 23 Fahrenheit) -- and the heat of the day -- which goes up to 15, 16 degrees -- that there will be many more survivors," David Heymann, an infectious disease expert, told a news conference in Geneva, where the WHO is based.

The devastating pre-dawn quake on December 26 killed more than 30,000 people. It virtually flattened the ancient city, injuring about 22,000 people and leaving an estimated 75,000 homeless.

But despite an influx of US humanitarian aid and American overtures towards rapprochement, Ayatollah Ali Khameini accused Washington of continuing to show "basic hostility" towards Iran.

However, if the United States "were to change its attitude, we are not people who are obstinate toward anyone," he said in his first remarks on the matter since the tragedy.

In a speech broadcast on television, Khamenei said Iran's leaders "had to accept (the US aid) because it was destined for the people.

Another two tremors hit a major oil- and gas-producing area in southwest Iran, seismologists said, a day after the region was put on maximum alert over the possibility of another major quake.

Over the past two days, 30 tremors have been recorded, scientists at Tehran University's geophysical institute were quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

Meanwhile, the United Nations and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called at a news conference in Bam and in Geneva for 70 million dollars of aid for the area.

"The 70 million dollars are sufficient for the next 90 days and after 90 days we will enter the rebuilding phase. Most of that has to come from the government," said the UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, said in Bam.

About 100 million dollars of aid has already been pledged since the quake.

In Geneva, an advisor at Iran's ministry of health and medical education, Mohammad Hossein Nicknam, said the quake also destroyed or damaged the city's three hospitals, 23 health centres and 95 smaller clinics.

Half of Bam's medical personnel also perished, Nicknam told reporters during a trip to Geneva where he was helping to coordinate the aid appeal.

Representatives from donor countries are due to meet at the United Nation's European headquarters in Geneva on Friday to discuss the relief effort.

Aid has poured into Bam from more than 40 countries in the wake of the tremor and officials remained optimistic that the momentum would remain as the focus switches from emergency relief to longer term reconstruction.

With thousands sleeping in the open in freezing temperatures in southeastern Iran and few sanitation facilities, the risk of respiratory infections has increased sharply, the Red Cross federation pointed out.

Malaria has traditionally been endemic in the area, which has also seen recent outbreaks of typhoid and cholera, it said.

TERRA.WIRE